Yellow Glacier Lily

Yellow Glacier Lily, Yellow Avalanche Lily ~ erythronium grandiflorum

These are early spring flowers so they have been blooming for awhile. In fact they are through blooming in most of the lower elevations, but they are in peak bloom now higher up (above 3,000 feet). Their bulbs were an important food item for some of the indigenous people in this region.

Glacier Lilies ~ Avalanche Lilies

Glacier Lily ~ Erythronium grandiflorum

(And a somewhat rare white Shooting Star)

Spring Beauties

Having not encountered any of these in my wanderings in the valley this spring, I feared that I had missed seeing them this year…

Lanceleaf Springbeauty, Claytonia lanceolata

but here they are, growing next to snowbanks where they like it most,

Big Hole Lookout trail

and as usual, these are blooming along with them.

Glacier Lily, Avalanche Lily, Erythronium grandiflorum

April flowers

Our western Montana wildflowers are now well into their spring routine and although I had hoped to show them as they bloom and spotlight each one, alas, I have fallen behind and must try to catch up in the next several posts by showing several at a time. This time of year, each hike uncovers several new blooms. It’s a wonderful time of year!

Arrow-leaved Balsamroot, Balsamorhiza sagittata

Spring Draba, Spring Whitlow Grass, Whitlow Grass, Draba Verna

Spring Draba, Spring Whitlow Grass, Whitlow Grass, Draba Verna

Desert Parsley, Suksdorf’s desert-parsley, Lomatium suksdorfii

Glacier Lily, Avalanche Lily, Dogtoothed Violet, Erythronium grandiflorum

Glacier Lily, Avalanche Lily, Dogtoothed Violet, Erythronium grandiflorum

Glacier Lily, Avalanche Lily, Dogtoothed Violet, Erythronium grandiflorum

Glacier Lily, Avalanche Lily, Dogtoothed Violet, Erythronium grandiflorum

Two sets of tracks

The trail I hiked upon today spends nearly all of its time at the dark bottom of a very deep canyon, but as it nears the end of its first mile it climbs up the east mountainside for a short distance to avoid some really nasty terrain and there a few rays of sun can penetrate to warm a small place of a hundred or so feet and provide a comfortable bed for a sprinkling of early wildflowers; today, Yellow Glacier Lilies.

Yellow Glacier Lily, Avalanche Lily, Dogtooth Violet, Erythronium grandiflorum

After hiking just a few hundred yards past the lilies I could see snow banks covering the trail and I knew that not far beyond that point the trail would be buried under deep piles of snow as it again settles into the canyon bottom and I decided to go back down.

As I turned around I began to wonder about the tracks that I could see in the snow and, because they were quite large and up to that point my tracks were the only ones on the trail, I thought they were probably those of a bear, and ventured up to the snow to see if there might be tracks of a new cub as well. But they were not bear tracks.

(For perspective, from the front of the pistol barrel to the rear sight is 6 inches.)

I was careful to leave a clear set my own tracks right beside those big paw prints to let their maker know that he is not the only lobo who roams this part of the forest.

Dogtoothed Violet

There is a place I know where the sun can shine bright on a tiny hill in the bottom of a deep canyon and allow the Dogtoothed Violets to bloom earlier there than they do anywhere else around. It seemed appropriate to visit that place today to see this area’s first-blooming lily.

AKA: Glacier Lily, Yellow avalanche-lily, Erythronium grandiflorum.